Arctic Sunrise Expedition to Svalbard

Greenpeace-commissioned artist John Quigley with the help of the Arctic Sunrise crew created a giant version of Leonardo da Vinci's famous sketch 'Vitruvian Man' depicted melting from the sea ice into the Arctic Ocean. The work has been constructed just 800 kilometres from the North Pole, as a call for urgent action on climate change.

Leading independent ice scientists from the University of Cambridge joined the Greenpeace ice breaker Arctic Sunrise on an expedition to test Arctic sea ice thickness, in a year that marked the second-lowest sea ice minimum on record. Temperature rise in the Arctic is among the fastest on Earth due to emissions of carbon dioxide from oil, coal and gas. As climate change causes the Arctic's sea ice cover to recede, the ice's cooling effect caused by its reflecting solar radiation back into space is reduced, causing temperatures to rise even faster.